On Cynicism
Been a while again. Musing last night. Probably nothing original, but I need to get back into the writing game.
I do not keep my most thorough and inclusive cynicism secret very often. Sure, I flirt with hopeful romanticism as much as I can, but I doubt if I’ll ever really know what to accept-not at least without an exhaustive investigation into the why of the situation. It isn’t that I mistrust so much as it is that I worry. I have an absurd and unending need to verify everything thrice in my head. Hence, my ceaseless need to know the why, and to understand absolutely everything with which I involve myself. It will never be enough for me to accept for instance the limitations of the movie industry. I must understand how it works, and in so doing develop ideas for how it might otherwise work.
As I do not intend, however, to make this a bombastic rant on my own neuroses, I must extend the context of my topic. The worrying quality actually creates a certain breed of leader. Some men lead others through sheer domination, or through inherited respect, or through an appeal to the proxy in their hearts. The remainder of us content ourselves behind the screen, pulling at strings with the maniacal glee of a mad scientist or pouring over updated assessments like an eternally disgruntled Mr. Burns. Put me in a room full of partiers, and I won’t (soberly) reach for the megaphone. Give me a task, though, and I have to take over, regardless of who might also want the job. Certain people need to succeed. I’m not talking about life success, that nebulous waif that middle school told you drugs would steal away. Certain people need to succeed only because failure means mediocrity-that great killer of dreams, which are always the last part of a man to die. So instead we worry. We question the problem thoroughly, thrash it relentlessly as a betraying lover, reach out probing and feeling and shifting until we can see no way but the right way.
So when another comes and says after a cursory study that he has the solution, he must be wrong. Disaster will billow from his solution. If we are clever and practiced at handling others, this will not happen, and we find ourselves in charge of seeing our own ideas through. It would, of course, be an exaggeration to say we do it not for love and we do it not for glory. We find those things always in small part in the fear that drives us. We fear mediocrity, as it leads unfailingly to obscurity. Obscurity holds no meaning. Obscurity renders my life pointless. I wish I could apologize for my egocentricism, but there is no “grand scheme” without me. In fact, I am humble myself to admit that I cannot truly see beyond my own experience. If my life is pointless in the grand scheme, then, why include me at all? Obscurity thus renders everything pointless. Glory through success can be the very meaning to life. Great purposes realized, a powerful legacy accomplished, these hold out against the mediocrity of death. Love is a particularly potent drug that, while unremarkable in letting these worries escape our minds, does so longer than any other. Love, glory, and fear. Perhaps there are other ways of looking at these three pieces. I know there are. In fact, I posit that the way in which a man views these three most basic achievements of the soul defines it. I am, however, as I said, a cynic.
(So I can’t be sure whether I believe any of this.)
I do not keep my most thorough and inclusive cynicism secret very often. Sure, I flirt with hopeful romanticism as much as I can, but I doubt if I’ll ever really know what to accept-not at least without an exhaustive investigation into the why of the situation. It isn’t that I mistrust so much as it is that I worry. I have an absurd and unending need to verify everything thrice in my head. Hence, my ceaseless need to know the why, and to understand absolutely everything with which I involve myself. It will never be enough for me to accept for instance the limitations of the movie industry. I must understand how it works, and in so doing develop ideas for how it might otherwise work.
As I do not intend, however, to make this a bombastic rant on my own neuroses, I must extend the context of my topic. The worrying quality actually creates a certain breed of leader. Some men lead others through sheer domination, or through inherited respect, or through an appeal to the proxy in their hearts. The remainder of us content ourselves behind the screen, pulling at strings with the maniacal glee of a mad scientist or pouring over updated assessments like an eternally disgruntled Mr. Burns. Put me in a room full of partiers, and I won’t (soberly) reach for the megaphone. Give me a task, though, and I have to take over, regardless of who might also want the job. Certain people need to succeed. I’m not talking about life success, that nebulous waif that middle school told you drugs would steal away. Certain people need to succeed only because failure means mediocrity-that great killer of dreams, which are always the last part of a man to die. So instead we worry. We question the problem thoroughly, thrash it relentlessly as a betraying lover, reach out probing and feeling and shifting until we can see no way but the right way.
So when another comes and says after a cursory study that he has the solution, he must be wrong. Disaster will billow from his solution. If we are clever and practiced at handling others, this will not happen, and we find ourselves in charge of seeing our own ideas through. It would, of course, be an exaggeration to say we do it not for love and we do it not for glory. We find those things always in small part in the fear that drives us. We fear mediocrity, as it leads unfailingly to obscurity. Obscurity holds no meaning. Obscurity renders my life pointless. I wish I could apologize for my egocentricism, but there is no “grand scheme” without me. In fact, I am humble myself to admit that I cannot truly see beyond my own experience. If my life is pointless in the grand scheme, then, why include me at all? Obscurity thus renders everything pointless. Glory through success can be the very meaning to life. Great purposes realized, a powerful legacy accomplished, these hold out against the mediocrity of death. Love is a particularly potent drug that, while unremarkable in letting these worries escape our minds, does so longer than any other. Love, glory, and fear. Perhaps there are other ways of looking at these three pieces. I know there are. In fact, I posit that the way in which a man views these three most basic achievements of the soul defines it. I am, however, as I said, a cynic.
(So I can’t be sure whether I believe any of this.)